Evan Almighty

When I decided to watch Evan Almighty, I was sceptical at best. Rarely is a sequel as good as the original movie (Bruce Almighty). Yet to my pleasant surprise, this time it was.

Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell), the anchorman from Bruce Almighty, is on the up and up in this spin-off . He gets elected to the United States Congress, moves the family into a McMassive house, buys a new car and is given the chance to “change the world”—just not in the way he thought he would.

It is here that God (Morgan Freedman) enters the scene and asks Evan to build him an ark to prepare for the upcoming flood.

Initially unbelieved and significantly unwanted, God subjects Evan to the clichéd family fun Santa Claus movie makeover, only with more hilarity (thanks to the birds) but equal eventual success.
Thus, the ark begins to take shape as doomsday approaches.
Evan Almighty is not breathtakingly new in its form of humour.

The story plays on a juvenile level with a boatload of puns (sorry, I couldn’t help myself ) and often resorts to dumb slapstick (dropping bird poo is utilised frequently, as is Evan hitting his thumb with a giant mallet at least five times).

Unlike Bruce Almighty, which was greeted by initially concerned Christians, Evan Almighty takes the safe path from the beginning, with more of an inoffensive “Sunday school” lesson feel to it.

While some secular critics think this is distasteful, I found having a comedy with Christian core values, which doesn’t feature talking vegetables, is a refreshing change.

Evan Almighty portrays a God who does have a sense of humour and likes to use it. However, sometimes when we’re the recipient, it doesn’t feel so great. Yet in everyday life when the bigger picture is revealed, God shows us the funny side. From the beginning of Evan Almighty through to the final, rather predictable, outcome of the movie, we get to see God’s sense of humour demonstrated.

God has taken a man who wants to “change the world” through his own plans, in this case government, and shown him God’s plans are more important.

It’s so easy for us to believe that we have all the answers or that we alone can make a difference—but sometimes our plans are not God’s plans.

God sees everything and has bigger dreams for us than we have for ourselves. We only have to have faith and He will deliver us from the humiliating mob that mocks us—He will save us from our own blindness.

Only when we have faith in God’s plan will we truly be able to change the world. In Evan Almighty, “God” suggests one way to start: “One act of random kindness at a time.” You can read the story of Noah, the ark and the flood in Genesis, chapters 5 to 9.